DJ 303 said:
now the term is ambiguous to say the least.
personally, as a rationalist, logical thinker, athiest, skeptic and myth buster I avoid the term entirely.
for me it carries too much meaningless ambiguity
See, this is a great example of what I was talking about before that irks me. (You too, ebola.) So you're not a spiritual person, feel that spirituality has no merit, and don't really enjoy the company of people who are vocally spiritual. You've made that abundantly clear, and I'm entirely cool with that -- that's your personal taste. What bothers me is why people like you feel the need to go a step further and say that the term has no precise meaning. People use the word all the time without having to explain what they mean, which to me indicates the word is not meaningless or ambiguous.
I think what you're really trying to say is that you reject spirituality because different people look beyond the material world and think they see vastly different things there, rather than one consistent thing. But the word spirituality refers to the
action of seeking beyond the material world, not the
entities that seekers apparently find there. It's a category of behavior, and this behavior happens in some consistent ways and for consistent motivations, regardless of whether there is anything to be found beyond than the material world.
By way of analogy, I am not a car-waxing man. Cars are merely a form of transportation to me, and as such, I feel that car-waxing is a waste of time and money. In my view, there is no tangible benefit or worthwhile effect to my car being waxed. I don't keep company with car waxers, and I'd tire quickly of a conversation about the joys of car waxing. If you asked me why I didn't see any merit in car waxing, I'd gladly tell you. Part of it has to do with the fact that different car waxers get different and inconsistent results. However, for all that, I acknowledge that the term "car waxing" has a valid and generally agreed-upon definition, which refers to a fairly consistent sort of activity. For all my distaste for car waxing, I would never think to say, "The term 'car waxing' is ambiguous / meaningless / imprecise."
Once again, I'm talking semantics and semiotics here, not metaphysics. I'm not asking you or anyone to explain why you think the spiritual quest is fruitless -- you've already made that abundantly clear. I'm asking you why you, and many other rationalists, have a problem with the very word itself.